Stan. said:
Xavier clarke isnt a bad player, not sure why you think he is relevant to what i said.
Cole was highly rated by who?
Probably only 'experts' like wiseby and yourself rated him.
No, I never rated him, but I didn't rate Dal Santo back then either.
People seem to assume that we were tossing up between the two, when it's entirely possible that we wouldn't have picked either if Cole was off the board.
We could have drafted Ashley Watson, Barry Brooks, Shane Harvey or Daniel Elstone with the picks, all of whom were picked inside the top 20, and they actually would have been leaving us wishing we picked Richard Cole...
And FYI, Cole was at #7 in Matt Burgan's phantom draft in 2001, while Dal Santo was at #16. He had Collingwood taking Mark Seaby with pick #11, which would have undoubtedly been a better move.